There are several existing transmission media and transmission protocols for transferring audio and music data between processing devices. Examples includes the Kurzweil KDS audio interface, the Audio and Music Data Transmission Protocol for transmitting data over a IEEE-1394 standard serial bus, also called mLAN, the ADAT optical interface from Alesis, and the Sample Multiplexing (S/MUX) protocol from Sonorus. For example, an audio system, such as a digital audio workstation, may be connected using such transmission media and protocols to a peripheral device that processes audio data in a manner specified by the audio system.
Generally, transmission media and transmission protocols for communicating between audio systems and peripheral devices seek to solve problem such as reliability, channel density, multiple high sample rates, dual time domains, long cable distances, low latency communication, synchronous operation and real-time communication, all while maintaining low costs.